The positive impacts to biodiversity of plantation Trees used in plantations may have more conservation value than existing vegetation such as pasture, also it may improve downstream water quality and provide habitat for aquatic biota. Moreover, it will sequester carbon and hence contribute to mitigating or reducing climate change. The plantation may lead to reduced pressure on the harvest of rainforests elsewhere. Most importantly, Biopact (2008) explained that the farmers relied upon the leaf litter from the surrounding production forests to produce mulch for their crops, rather than using costly fertilizers.

The negative impacts of plantation are the weeds and feral animals harboured by plantations may invade remnant forests. Also, plantation agriculture can also damage the natural environment and destroy the habitats of the people and other living things whose survival depends on the forest. In order to clear land for plantations, heavy machinery are used and it can clear thousands of hectares of forests. RedOrbit (2012) claimed that the Poorly planned plantation result in needless land clearing and increase the invasive species and damage the natural ecological processes. The large-scale clearing of land damages the natural environment and destroys the habitats of people and other living things. The plantation also causes the air pollution because of the deforestation.. If the soils become infertile, the yields of crops will be lower. It will be cause the loss of livelihoods. In addition, exotic tree species used in plantations may invade native forests. it may become a risk of species invading native forests or genetic introgression into local populations of trees, and the plantations may harbour weeds and feral animals.

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...Biodiversity is comprised of the totality of genes, species and ecosystems of a region. The occurrence of various kinds of flora and fauna in a region reflects its biological diversity or biodiversity. In most parts of the world which are habitable, the living world abounds in biodiversity. In a patch of forest, there is a wide variety of insects, animals, plants and trees.
All plant and animal species cannot occur at one place. Whether or not a species can occur on a site is determined by environmental conditions of site and range of tolerance of species. Biologically rich and unique habitats are being perished, fragmented and degraded due to increasing human activities, resource consumption and pollution. Biodiversity loss is now one of the most pressing crises. How to check the loss of species and erosion of gene pool is one of the major challenges to science.
Systemic work on identifying and naming species has been in progress for the last two centuries. But still, the numbers of species collected, described and named so far are much less than the actual number of species present. The known and described number of species of all organisms on earth is between 1.7 and 1.8 million, which is fewer than the 15 per cent of the actual number. The predicted number of total species varies from 5 to 50 million and averages at 14 million. There are many more species that have not yet been described,...

...Biodiversity is the degree of variation of life forms within a given ecosystem, biome, or an entire planet. Biodiversity is a measure of the health of ecosystems. Greater biodiversity implies greater health. Biodiversity is in part a function of climate. In terrestrial habitats, tropical regions are typically rich whereas polar regions support fewer species.
Rapid environmental changes typically cause extinctions. One estimate is that less than 1% of the species that have existed on Earth are extant.[1]
Since life began on Earth, five major mass extinctions and several minor events have led to large and sudden drops in biodiversity. The Phanerozoic eon (the last 540 million years) marked a rapid growth in biodiversity via the Cambrian explosion—a period during which nearly every phylum of multicellular organisms first appeared. The next 400 million years included repeated, massive biodiversity losses classified as mass extinction events. In the Carboniferous, rainforest collapse led to a great loss of plant and animal life.[2] The Permian–Triassic extinction event, 251 million years ago, was the worst; vertebrate recovery took 30 million years.[3] The most recent, the Cretaceous–Tertiary extinction event, occurred 65 million years ago, and has often attracted more attention than others because it resulted in the extinction of the dinosaurs.[4]
The period since the emergence...

...
Biodiversity
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Coral reefs are amongst the most diverse ecosystems on earth.
Rainforests are an example of biodiversity on the planet and typically possess a great deal of species diversity. This is the Gambia River in Senegal's Niokolo-Koba National Park.
Biodiversity is the degree of variation of life.[1] It is a measure of the variety of organisms present in different ecosystems. This can refer to genetic variation, ecosystem variation, or species variation (number of species)[1] within an area, biome, or planet. Terrestrial biodiversity tends to be highest near the equator,[2] which seems to be the result of the warm climate and high primary productivity.[3] Biodiversity is not distributed evenly on Earth. It is the richest in the tropics. Marine biodiversity tends to be highest along coasts in the Western Pacific, where sea surface temperature is highest and in the mid-latitudinal band in all oceans. There are latitudinal gradients in species diversity.[4] Biodiversity generally tends to cluster in hotspots,[5] and has been increasing through time[6][7] but will be likely to slow in the future.[8]Rapid environmental changes typically cause mass extinctions.[9][10][11] One estimate is that &lt;1%–3% of the species that have existed on Earth are extant.[12]The earliest evidences for life on Earth are graphite found to be...

...﻿Hand out : Biodiversity
Biological Diversity or Biodiversity - is the variety (diversity) of all life forms on earth, encompassing all plants, animals, microorganisms and the intricate ecosystems they form.
- the totality of ecosystems, species, and genes within the area.
Levels of Biodiversity
1. Species Diversity (Different Life Forms)
2. Genetic Diversity (Different characteristics of plants, animals & other living organisms)
3. Ecosystem Diversity (Different types of Ecosystem)
Species: Two individuals are named to be of the same species if they can reproduce and their offspring is fertile. Species are the units of biodiversity.
a group of related or similar organisms capable of breeding freely to produce fertile offspring. It is the basic unit of biological classification and hence, its use as a measure of biodiversity.
Species Diversity - refers to the variety of species found within a discrete geographical boundary. It is usually measured in terms of the total number of species found within a particular area.
Importance of Biodiversity
To maintain or restore healthy ecosystem functioning
To maintain photosynthetic fixation of solar energy, the energy input for the world
To maintain water cycles and protect watersheds
To avoid climatic change
To maintain storage and cycling of nutrients
To maintain soil production and avoid soil erosion
To...

...﻿Ícaro Rocha de Almeida
Word count: 516
Discuss the benefits to humans of biodiversity, and outline with examples the most important current threats to biodiversity.
Biodiversity is an important topic in the modern globalized world; from its enormous potentials to its concerns. Biodiversity means: “The variety of plant and animal life in the world or in a particular habitat, a high level of which is usually considered to be important and desirable.” according to the Oxford Dictionary; it influences almost everything that surround you: from the fruit you eat to the clothes you wear.
Biodiversity underpins the World: several businesses have an equilibrated and sustainable ecosystem as a requirement to remain lawful, possible and promising; some of them depend and/or derive benefits from biodiversity, such as: farming, food processing, retail, brewing and distilling, pharmaceuticals and petrochemicals (Scottish Diversity Forum, 2010).
On agriculture, a number of curious figures can be exposed: out of 10 million species of plants, animals and microbes, constituting the biota (Pimm et al. , 1995), only 12 kinds of plants are responsible for 75% of the world’s food supply (Gaston and Spicer, 2004), being the majority of 60% comprising only 3 out of the 12 categories: rice, wheat and corn (Wilson, 1988).
Natural medicines are trusted by more than 60% of people as a important primary health...

...﻿ A Detailed explanation Biodiversity!
Introduction
What is Biodiversity ?
The word 'biodiversity' is a contraction (short form) of biological diversity. Diversity is a concept which refers to the range of variation or differences among some set of entities; biological diversity thus refers to variety within the living world (here a habitat).
The term 'biodiversity' is indeed commonly used to describe the number, variety and variability of living organisms.
From the above explanation it is clear that biodiversity is the variety or different living organisms present in a particular habitat.
Meaning of the word Biodiversity.
As read from d above explanations Biodiversity, Biodiversity can be broken down and represented like this
Biodiversity=Biological+ Diversity
Biological=Consisting of all living beings
Diversity=Variety
Types of Biodiversity
There are three major kinds of Biodiversity they are:-
1. Diversity of species- Number of different species that are present in the universe(>1.7Million)
2. Genetic Diversity-Here the inside a species there are different configurations.
3. Ecosystem Diversity- Variety of habitats around the world eg.Deserts ,Tundra’s,Marine ecosystem
DISTRIBUTION OF BIODIVERSITY
Flora and fauna diversity depends on-
Climate
Altitude-Refers to...

...Threats to Biodiversity
Extinction is a natural event and, from a geological perspective, routine. We now know that most species that have ever lived have gone extinct. The average rate over the past 200 million years is 1-2 species per million species present per year. The average duration of a species is 1-10 million years (based on the last 200 million years). There have also been several episodes of mass extinction, when many taxa representing a wide array of life forms have gone extinct in the same blink of geological time.In the modern era, due to human actions, species and ecosystems are threatened with destruction to an extent rarely seen in Earth history. Probably only during the handful of mass extinction events have so many species been threatened, in so short a time.What are these human actions that threaten biodiversity? There are many ways to conceive of these; let's consider two.First, we can attribute the loss of species and ecosystems to the accelerating transformation of the Earth by a growing human population. As the human population passes the 6 billion mark, we have transformed, degraded or destroyed roughly half of the word's forests. We appropriate roughly half of the world's net primary productivity for human use. We appropriate most available fresh water, and we harvest virtually all of the available productivity of the oceans. It is little wonder that species are disappearing and ecosystems are being destroyed....

...Unit 1 Review
Environmental Science is the study of how the natural world and how the environment
affects humans (and vice versa)
- Interdisciplinary (natural v. social sciences)
- Experiments, data, etc.
Environmentalism is a social movement that tries to protect the natural world from
human changes
- Promoting change in behavior
- Can be radical
Natural resources are substances and energy source needed for survival
1. Renewable resources can be replinished
a. Sunlight, wind, timber, water, soil
2. Nonrenewable resources are unavailable after depletion
a. Oil, coal, natural gas
Ecosystem services arise from the normal functioning of natural services
- Regulating climate
- Purifying air and water
- Cycle nutrients
Agricultural Revolution is the shift around 10,000 years ago from a hunter-gatherer
lifestyle to an agricultural way of life in which people began to grow their own crops and
raise domesticated animals
Industrial Revolution is the shift in the mid 1700’s from rural life, animal powered
agriculture, and manufacturing by craftsman to an urban society powered by fossil fuels
such as coal and crude oil
Ecological footprint is the cumulative amount of land and water required to provide the
raw materials a person or population consumes and to dispose or recycle the waste that is
produced
Sustainability is a guiding principle of environmental science that requires us to live in
such a way as to...